MEN I HAVE PAINTED
of West and his work, and in this way showed his respect and esteem for a great American.
The third Quaker is Joseph Pennell. He, like West, has found in England and in Europe a more congenial field for the exercise of his talents; but in spite of his long residence in London, unlike West he has remained an American and, above all, a Philadelphian. Penn and West were English Quakers; Pennell is an American Quaker, and proud of his association with the Society of Friends, in love with the old meeting-houses, and in complete sympathy with the pacific tenets and ideas of the society. Naturally of a soft and gentle disposition, he can sometimes, when his artistic instincts are violated, be aroused to vehement opposition, almost to aggressiveness, in the pursuit of his pet theories; and, like all Quakers, he believes he is right.
At an early period in his career, with his wife, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, a helpmeet and coadjutor whom Heaven must have designed for him, he began to traverse Europe in search of the picturesque; and after finding numerous imperfect specimens which were brilliantly and artistically recorded, with both pen and pencil, he found the real thing—the most picturesque town in the world—Le Puy, in mid-France.
On one occasion Fisher Unwin and Pennell met in Provence—this was while the artist was drawing those wonderful cloisters in the cathedral at Arles. There was some trouble with the Gens d'Armes, as the artist would sketch near the fortifications protecting Les Saintes Maries on the Bouche du Rhône. This journey resulted in a great picture, for, on leaving the artist, Fisher Unwin got off the train at a town called Le Puy and wrote to Pennell that
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